The provision of services to a user or users may at times be inflexible, and time consuming, both from the point of view of the user or users and the service providers. For example, the following activities: entertainment selection, prescribing and dispensing drugs, self education via tutorials payment to the copyright owner for the right to use the source material, all involve disadvantages, which now will discussed.
Watching television, home videos, and like sources of entertainment is an everyday activity for all households. Various sources of entertainment are available including television and other broadcast or network mass media, including cable television. Entertainment programme guides are available in print form, for example in newspapers and periodicals. Entertainment programme guides are also available in electronic form via the Internet or world wide web. The electronic form of programme guides are particularly suitable for coupling to home entertainment appliances so that a programme can be automatically selected for reception and perhaps recorded for the purposes of time shifting. It is also possible to apply selection criteria to create a personalised guide customised for an individual preference so that, for example, all episodes of a particular TV mini series are able to be recorded.
These prior art methods of selecting programmes suffer, however, from the disadvantage that there is no tangible object corresponding to a guide selection which the user can use as an interface to activate programmes. Instead the information exists in electronic form within the user's appliance or in the service provider's database(s). As the number of channels providing content, and the content on each channel, increases, the amount of corresponding information becomes larger and larger. This makes it more difficult for the user to easily retrieve a particular piece of customised programming.
Additionally, as there is no tangible object corresponding to the stored programming, it is not possible to take advantage of well developed marketing techniques for product promotion using programming. For example, it is difficult for a media company to draw the attention of viewers to a particular programme (eg a special feature) and at the same time promote associated products via advertising. In the case where the programming information is stored in electronic form inside the user's appliance, no opportunity exists for the advertiser to provide information to allow the user to easily link from the programme to associated promotions.
A further disadvantage of electronic programme guides is that there is no facility to allow the user to be identified. Consequently, there is no provision for restricting minors, for example, to a particular type or category of programme. Such a feature is particularly desired in many households where parental control over the viewing habits of children is a desired outcome.
Ill health is an occasional occurrence for most persons and this generally involves a visit to a medical practitioner who determines the nature of the ailment and writes a prescription for a drug. The patient then takes the prescription to chemist who actually dispenses the drug. The drug is then swallowed, rubbed on, or otherwise administered to the patient in accordance with some instructions determined by the medical practitioner and/or the drug manufacturer. Generally this results in the ailment being cured.
In different countries, different terms are used for the participants in this process. The term “medical practitioner” will be used herein to include doctors and physicians. The term “chemist” will be used herein to include pharmacists, druggists and apothecaries. The term “chemist shop” will be used herein to include drug stores and pharmacies. The term “prescription” will be used herein to include scripts. The term “drug” will be used herein to include medicines and pharmaceuticals.
The abovementioned manual system suffers from several disadvantages. One is that because the information is in written form it requires manual transcription. This can be manual transcription from a work of reference in the medical practitioner's surgery onto the prescription written by the medical practitioner. In addition, manual transcription also occurs in the chemist shop where the chemist is obliged to transfer the information onto the packaging of the drug. Often this takes the form of an adhesive label which covers over other valuable information on the drug packaging. Sometimes the chemist prints out general notes for the patient which requires additional effort on the chemist's part and the notes may well get separated from the drug itself.
Furthermore, the abovementioned scheme to some extent inadvertently reduces the patient's access to information. Although the patient can read the prescription, the patient is not normally accustomed to the abbreviations and notations used by medical practitioners in communicating with chemists. In addition, the handwriting of medical practitioners is notoriously hard to decipher. Whilst most chemists are used to reading the handwriting of medical practitioners in their area, the patients of the medial practitioners are not used to reading this handwriting.
A further disadvantage is that the prescription in written form is not amenable to electronic commerce. As the information on the prescription is not in machine readable form, the purchase of the drug by means of an on-line chemist service is inhibited. In particular, this would require manual transcription of the information on the prescription into electronic form for transmission to such an on-line pharmacy. Since such transcription errors could be life threatening, if the incorrect dosage, for example, is specified as a result of a typographical error, such on-line electronic commerce is inhibited.
Furthermore, various government regulations apply to the dispensing of drugs, often because there is a government subsidy involved in the cost of the drug to the patient. For example, the patient or his agent is required to sign a receipt for the drug. In addition, prescriptions often require repeats, checks for the expiry date of the prescription, and similar requirements. Having this data in machine readable form would allow these tasks to be delegated to a computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,883,370 discloses the user of bar codes generated by a medical practitioner to identify a prescribed drug and for the chemist to read the prescribed bar code and the bar code on the label of the drug to be dispensed with a bar code reader located in the chemist shop. The drug is only dispensed if there is a match between the two bar codes. The purpose of the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 5,883,370 is to prevent the possible mis-dispensing or erroneous dispensing of drugs.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,542 discloses the use by a chemist of a computer and automatic telephone dialler to telephone the patient when a refill or repeat prescription is due. The purpose of the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,542 is to increase correct drug taking compliance and increase the sale of refill or repeat prescriptions at chemist shops utilising the computerised dial up system.
Learning is an everyday activity for all households and a wide variety of educational classes, methods of instruction, and so on, are known. For example, cooking tutorials are available in printed form and also in the form of video cassettes or video discs. With the assistance of these devices, a cook can increase his or her knowledge of the preparation or presentation of particular types of foods.
However, this printed form of instructional material suffers from the disadvantage that the materials is not annotated, or indexed, with video material that would be of advantage in the learning process. Instead, these forms of presentation of information are relatively inflexible in that printed materials, videos, etc are normally produced in large runs and consequently are not easily adapted to local situations. For example, in certain seasons or in certain locations various ingredients are often unavailable and therefore substitutes should be recommended.
In particular, the video cassette suffers from the disadvantage that the material cannot be readily viewed in a non-linear fashion as the tape is not amenable to random access. Although the video disc form can be accessed in a non-linear fashion, the means for allowing the user to navigate through the various sections into which the disc is divided, generally take the form of structured menus. These menus, together with the limited functionality of user interfaces generally available on video disc players, results in a less than desirable user experience. This is especially important wherein the information is required urgently.
Other disadvantages of the tutorial material, irrespective of its form of presentation, is that it does not provide assistance such as automatic calculation of the volume of ingredients needed for different numbers of serves or measurements of, say, woodworking projects of differing sizes. Particularly where prime numbers such as 5 and 7 or 13 are involved, the arithmetic involved in adjusting the volumes, weights, dimensions, etc is not necessarily straightforward. Also there is generally no advice provided as to where or how the ingredients or raw materials can be purchased.
Various methods of compiling a document, collage, multi-media video clip, and the like from various different sources of content are well known. This can be done by manual editing, for example, or by electronic means that create a virtual document with references to the individual source items. A well known standard used on the World Wide Web is Synchronised Multi-media Integration Language (SMIL) which creates a document containing embedded links to other documents. For example, a document A may contain a link to a first video clip B and also to a second video clip C with the document being arranged so that the video clips B and C are played sequentially.
One problem which arises when such compilations of works from multiple sources are made is that of determining what the applicable charges are for the use of the source of material. For example, each component of the compilation may have a different rate of charging. In the example given above, the video clip B may cost one cent per second and the video clip C may cost five cents per second. These differences may be due to different ownership, market demand, and other relevant factors. Also the charge may depend on the quality of the presentation that is requested. For example, it may cost twice as much to display a high resolution television image than to display a standard resolution television image. Furthermore, differences in rates may apply to different usages. A compilation that is intended to be shown to a paying audience in an auditorium would normally be charged at a higher rate than for one which is intended to be viewed in a private home.
Because of all these factors, the creator of the compilation has a cumbersome task of finding out the appropriate payment to be made to the various copyright owners in order to legally create and reproduce the compilation. A further complication is that different legal entities represent different copyright owners and thus more than one collection agency may be involved. All these factors lead to the creator of the compilation spending significant amounts of time and effort in what is essentially a non-creative and burdensome task.